Quote Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold View Post
I wouldn't call it sad so much as weird. Why advance exactly one golem? And if you're doing that, why stone golem? Why not the more powerful iron golem, the classic clay golem, or maybe do something clever with a Huge flesh golem?
There is already an advancement rules for golems, with +5,000 gp to the price for each HD above what is listed, and an additional +50,000 per size increase. I suspect the greater stone golem is listed due to shenanigans with printed adventures, like there maybe was a dungeon with a lot of advanced golems with 42 HD, and they wanted to make it iconic enough by giving it its own entry?

Quote Originally Posted by GreatWyrmGold View Post
First off, you obviously don't play this in a campaign that isn't water-centric. Playing a freaky fish guy in a typical dungeon-crawler isn't completely invalid, but come on. The exact balance of water:land and how the two are combined (coastal city? pirate ship? Atlantis?) is going to strongly influence how I would handle this.
Beyond that, this isn't a very interesting monster to theorcraft for. Maybe I could sketch a primitive SCOBA apparatus for when you're forced out of the water in the early levels? The chassis is pretty good; you get a few +2 to ability scores, some solid natural armor, and a remarkable swim speed.
That is a good point. I generally rate these monsters as if they were going to be used in a classic campaign, since I consider not everybody in the party will take aquatic monsters, and they will try to keep away from the water as much as possible (as I always say, he is a fool the one who accepts to fight a water elemental in the water, and that applies to nigh on every aquatic monster). If the campaign is entirely aquatic, or at least most of it is spent underwater, then the LA would probably change, since the locathah becomes one of the only low-level classes players could choose that can natively breathe underwater.